The Horsingdon Transmissions No.25: The Burning Men

There is a very strange story pertaining, in part, to Northwich Fire Station. In 1958, 5 members of the Horsingdon Fire Service on duty at the station were called out to deal with the aftermath of a small explosion at Boreham House - an explosion whose epicentre appeared to be the boiler room in the cellars beneath one corner the building. The damaged portion of the house was suffused, according a report lodged one of the firemen on site, with a 'poisonous glow' and accompanied by 'odd sounds coming from below the house', which rapidly subsided.

Whilst the house was believed to be uninhabited, a badly-burned man dressed in a set of charred overalls was discovered near the wreckage of the explosion, presumed tto be the caretaker of the property. The victim's injuries were so horrificly severe that, apparently, he was hardly recognisable as a human being.

This individual was taken by ambulance to Northwich Park Hospital, but was not expected to survive the night; he was subsequently left, unattended, in a private room set off from the other wards on account of his horrific appearance. At around 3 am, a shaken hospital porter reported to one of the nurses on duty that he had witnessed the horribly-burnt patient leave his room, and make his way down a nearby service room which was part of the hospital's extensive basement system. He went on to describe a sequence of events whose denouement was, frankly, incredible. What he initially thought to be the patient turned out to be a faceless, quasi-anthropomorphic mass of some grey organic matter. According to the porter, the thing turned to him briefly, 'spoke in a language which hurt my ears with something that wasn't a mouth', before 'melting' into the concrete surface of one of the service room's wall - its final transition from this world accompanied by a sudden burst of sickly blue light. Only a pile of ruined overalls was left in the thing's wake. As for the nameless individual who had been taken to the hospital in the aftermath of the Boreham House explosion, no sign could be found.

Not long after, the porter who claimed to have winessed this wholly remarkable and unnatural event died of a painful and drawn-out illness, the symptoms of which were described by the doctor treating him - who, as it happens, had overseen the welfare of troops involved in some of the early British nuclear testing in Australia in 1952 - as similar to those produced by radiation sickness.

All of the men who had attended the aftermath of the explosion at Boreham House also succumbed to various aggressive forms of cancer within two years of the incident. There is a horrible rumour that their ghosts are sometimes to be encountered in the tower of Northwich Fire Service, howling silently and mindlessly, as if trapped in some hellish otherwold and desparately seeking a merciful release.

Repairs to the damage to Boreham House were undertaken at the behest of the legal representatives of the Boreham family. Medical statistics indicate a notable spike in cases of cancer and leukemia amongst residents of the surrounding area over the next two decades.